Encounters
by DahliaASant
Summary: She was more than a forgotten heritage and a basket of flowers. She was darker than that, deeper than that...and who would ever guess that the least likely person in her life, a Turk, would be the one to see beyond her charade? [AerisxReno]
1. Drunken revelations

**Encounters**

_**Author's Note: This is my first attempt at an AerisxReno 'fic; this whole fanfiction is going to be comprised of a collection of encounters between the two characters, both canon and non-canon, in no particular chronological order. The stories will also vary from long to extremely short. Aeris is going to be much darker and more realistic than portrayed in the game, as I believe she would be if we got to really delve into her thoughts; and Reno is a combination of the original game and Advent Children in his attitude, because I liked both and couldn't decide on how to portray him consistently throughout the 'fic… SO. **_

_**Plleaseeee enjoy, and leave lots of feedback! I'll admit, I never finished the game entirely, but I like writing about the characters. So…constructive criticism is valued and preferred over flames.**_

* * *

**One**

She didn't know what led her to the bar on that day, or why she would remember that day for the remainder of her life. There was nothing particularly special about it-after all, a bar's main purpose was to sell its liquor and offer refuge to sullen spirits united in their hangovers. Aerith was never a girl that admired such places; on the contrary, the very thought of them was a trigger to memories of scolding Zack when she would catch him, pale and bleary-eyed, scooping her up in another one of his drunken stupors. It had always been a repulsive habit of his-

But maybe that was the reason why she found herself coming to the bar in the first place.

It reminded her of him.

Zack's memory had been blooming into her mind like a weed, choking away the purposely pure seeds sewn within to take place of the hole in her spirit; the false piety and saccharine cheerfulness wilting away effortlessly at the cusp of every nightfall. Night would come like a reopened wound for Aerith; her garden of false charades, closing their frail buds to leave nothing but the soil of her soul; cold, unexposed, vulnerable. The emerald-eyed girl ached for something to fill that hole, something real and rebellious, if not temporary.

Even a flower girl had her ugly weeds amongst the pretty blooms.

Even she needed to forget; to forget Zack, to forget the recent events that stung tightly at her heart and roused her disjointed emotions; her abduction, her rescue, what would come in the future…

Aeris knew she wouldn't live much longer.

Instinct was a bitch.

And so she was here, a bar at the edge of Midgar, exact location unknown, uncared for. It had stricken her as a place her friends and acquaintances would not catch her-it lay dormant like an old cripple against the thriving city, its gray skin in wooden shambles, the yawning windows webbed with age, its orifice a wrinkled door that groaned in neglected agony at her touch. The insides were just as neglected; the peeling walls the shade of time-worn stone, victimized tables with thin broken legs and tops bandaged together with lazy gauze, the ceiling a slanted lid upon the room, as awkwardly huge and misplaced as an afterthought.

Aerith studied the throngs of eccentric customers littering the dark area; people with menacing stares and narrowed eyes, people in stuttering, drunken stupors, people as gray and intimidating and lost as their surroundings.

She wondered if she was as lost as them-if beneath the bright clothing, the wide, luminescent eyes, was nothing but a frightened child, wrapped securely in her flesh, simply waiting to die. Waiting to mean something beyond a basket of flowers and a grinning face-something more than a Cetra, a remaining echo of a forever lost family. In that way, Aeris was lost in the worst sense; lost inside of herself, lost inside of the world, lost within Time. Lost and waiting to find a reason to mean something, to sacrifice for something real and complete. She didn't give a damn about her personal worth-

And that was why she longed to get drunk to the point of hurting herself.

Struggling to gather her composure, the flower girl made her way throughout the sloppily clustered tables, the sickeningly warm bodies of drunkards surrounding her, carrying a smell-a _stench_ that wafted through the cramped room, something so noxious she could not strain her mind to identify it, simply because she was struggling to wrinkle her nose at the same time.

As a shaggy-haired, dirty man eyed her with hunger, Aeris wondered for the infinite time if she was simply being suicidal-

Then, as her desperate green eyes scanned the dim room for a seat far away from the leering occupants, she received her answer.

It came in a loud, high whistle; a shock of bright red hair, mocking emerald eyes, and a Cheshire smirk.

"Well, if it isn't Aeris the flower girl!"

Her mind reeled before freezing completely. Aerith could only stare blankly at the man waving animatedly over to her, his slouching frame oozing nothing but cockiness, the purring arrogance of a spoiled cat. The girl's insides screamed to do nothing but turn on her heel and run out of the bar, yet her feet stuck stubbornly as if they had grown within the crevices of the floorboard.

Aerith Gainsborough had never been afraid of Reno-she knew he would capture her personally someday. He was a Turk, after all, and amazingly skilled in his job; memories of his last successful abduction of her floated too close to the surface-her unbridled fear at his triumphant, leering features, the hours spent in suspended tears within the cold confinement of her laboratory cell, waiting to be tampered with, to be violated and crossbred with Red XIII. It had been too recent, too traumatic to be simply dropped and forgotten-

But the Cetra was too exhausted to care. Perhaps today, she would offer the grinning Turk his obvious pleasure.

At her prolonged hesitation, the amused redhead brought his free hand up-the other wrapped securely about a slender bottle of…something, to beckon her over. She clenched her fists, considering; she was foolishly unarmed, more from recklessness than silly mistake, he was physically stronger; she had healing materia, he had his electric rod and, perhaps, a gun hiding beneath his suit. Resignedly, the girl stepped towards him and sat across his still-smirking face, and upon doing so caught a whiff of his breath.

The Turk was evidently very drunk. His cheeks were slightly flushed, accentuating the tattooed scars just below his gleaming eyes; his free hand suddenly clinging to the ebony rod at his side, he shook his bottle of alcohol amiably towards her, simultaneously swinging the electro-rod back and forth. Aeris winced, watching the direction of the rod anxiously as he swung it around his thin frame; and so did other nearby customers surrounding him as electric sparks flew through the air. Realizing he would not stop his swinging until she responded to what she took as an offer for a drink, she immediately shook her head, and just as immediately, the drunken Turk frowned and-to the relieved sighs of those around him-dropped his rod.

"Relax, babe! It's not poisoned or anything. I was just being a humble male host to my pretty little guest!"

With a wink and a chuckle at Aerith's uncomfortable expression, Reno leaned against his creaking seat, tipping the bottle down towards his opened mouth; the clear liquid slopped obediently down his awaiting orifice, and she realized this was clearly not the first time he had gotten so…

"Wasted," Her host suddenly chirped from his seat, wiping his mouth with his sleeve and setting his bottle firmly upon the trembling table, "The entire day has been wasted in here, with all of these fucking failures at life, and I _love_ it. And to think I was just _aching_ to be in the company of an attractive member of the opposite sex…well, I guess I'm pretty damn lucky tonight, hmm?"

Reno watched her with his foggy countenance, and winked at Aeris again, his sly expression causing her face to grow hot. Yet she was not convinced. Green eyes clashed with his own; she grit her teeth, her voice coming out in a slightly braver hiss than she truly felt,

"Is this some kind of trap-out to kidnap me _again_? Tell me, where are the rest of you hiding?"

At first, Reno blinked, appearing puzzled. Almost as quickly, he let out a cool chuckle,

"I'm off duty for now, Aeris. I don't want to kidnap you-it isn't something I would do in my spare time, you know; unless you _go_ for that type of thing…anyways, don't flatter yourself, otherwise!"

As if to accentuate his point, the red-haired Turk shook his bottle wildly, sprays of clear liquor falling in droplets across the girl's stunned face. She wiped the liquid away with caution, yet continued to stare, unnerved and curious, at the inanely drunken man before her. How alcohol and off-time had contributed to changing the suit-clad assassin from slick and serious to easygoing and amiable, she could not fathom. He was still the murderer of hundreds with the dropping of Midgar's plate, a ruthless kidnapper and criminal. Yet Reno was as she had remembered physically; resplendent in his crisp dark suit, the dress shirt slightly wrinkled and loose against his strong, lean torso, exotic scarlet hair framing his unpredictable features perfectly; the bangs that fell from the interruption of metallic goggles, shock of ruby confined to an almost feminine ponytail. Even the way he slouched, so secure and cocky and infuriatingly domineering against his low chair, seemed strangely attractive. She could see why a woman would want to sleep with him. It was different than Zack or Cloud; different than any man she had ever observed, ever been with. It was a difference she was afraid she found almost…

"Stockholm Syndrome?"

Aerith bit her lip and swore beneath her breath.

Reno had been watching her all throughout her careful analysis, cocking a scarlet brow and chuckling to himself.

"Stockholm Syndrome," The Cetra repeated, her voice quivering slightly, "That's not what I'd call it, Reno. It's more like a desire."

At this, Reno's jade eyes widened considerably in sudden surprise, "Oh?"

Aerith nodded; then, with a curt sense of satisfaction, found her irrational behavior getting the best of her,

"It's a desire to get the fuck out of your pathetic face, you murderer."

Even then, shock gripped her; evident in the way she gasped as the words left her lips, the way her fingers rose to cover the sharp insults from her soft, pink mouth. Aerith had never sworn before, not even in the most intense anger, the most offensive situation. And yet here she was, her inert state of frustration rising in unexpected fervor. Reno's mouth hung opened, exaggerated in his bewilderment, in the sudden onslaught of hostility from the fragile girl before him.

A period of tense silence passed between them, thick as cement, until the Turk's stagnant features broke quite suddenly into a clangor of hysterical laughter. It was Aerith's turn to stare blankly at the howling redhead, as he banged his clenched fist against the tabletop, green eyes slanted, laugh lines possessing the once stern quality of his face. People turned to stare in alarm at the loud convulsions-and Aerith wondered if she was dreaming.

But then he grew quiet, docile, and merely watched her, his fingers stroking the bottle at his side with a sense of deep interest.

"I've never heard your angry side, Aeris. I must have done something awful to make you hate me."

His expression was so inquisitive, so raw and confused and sickeningly _innocent_ of misdeeds, the girl desired to throw herself from her seat and slap him across the face. Her fingers trembled in her lap; she held them as tightly as she could, the knuckles growing deathly pale, her eyes shutting forcefully to forget his friendly face. The rage crept within her spine like a venomous spider; it had bitten her over the years, the wound growing deep and deadly until she wished to be destroyed by it; by anything other than the inevitable, anything other than the future. Aerith no longer wanted to be a victim; she no longer wanted to continue on the path she knew was her Fate, the path of an early death, the path of an all-consuming suffering.

She would die for this world-yet part of her did not want to. The mortal side, the horribly human side, the sinful and noxious portion of her spirit that crawled within her aching to _die_. It was aching to _die away_ to the pure Cetra exterior, the smiling, happy, unblemished outside; and yet her sins were all-consuming, and she _preferred _them.

And here was a man who embraced it; here was a man with both strength and weakness balanced favorably before her-a man who could be both violent and unerring, wicked and flirtatious. And she _hated_ it. She hated hating it, she hated envying him, envying all who did not _need_ to sacrifice, who did not thirst to save humanity, who did not have to die for it.

"It isn't you,"

She finally murmured, her closed eyes downcast, her body seething. Then, a cool hand upon her shoulder; distraction. She could sense the flaw in the fingertips, could sense the years of hard murder and coercion and sinfulness. She could feel the sensuousness of his grip, could imagine the way he seduced his women, the way he indulged within the things she could have never even spoken of-the liquor upon the table, the gambling with life itself, the cocky seduction of another innocent girl.

Aeris did not bother to budge his hand. Instead, it gave her a sense of solace-a sense of balance.

She opened her eyes and stared into his. His expression was unreadable, yet his brows were furrowed as he smoothly inquired,

"Why did you come here?"

He knew, then. He knew this was not an area she would ever in her right mind go to, if she were in her right state of mind. He saw the way she entered the bar with such hesitation, a pink bloom of brilliance marring the chaotic gray of normal low-living. He saw _her_, beneath the layers of carefully constructed conformity to her race, the human caught desperately within her divine noose.

"To forget,"

Aerith's voice choked on the words; Reno's hand slipped from her shoulder for an instant, but she clung stubbornly to his wrist, savored the strange feeling of understanding.

She had seen it in his green eyes, eyes mirroring her own with haunting perfection.

Confinement.

"You killed all those people," Her voice was a whisper, strong and sudden and menacing and beseeching, "You killed them all and you didn't regret it! How could you _do_ that, and have the nerve to come here and _drink_ to it all…"

"It's my duty, Aeris."

For the second time that day, the Cetra came to a shuddering stop. Reno was calm as he said it, as his fingertips tracing the outline of her shoulder against her jacket-a shadow over his eyes, almost sober in his speech, almost sympathetic, "Things have to be done, and I have no other choice. People die everyday…and in the end, I do my duty, and I come here, and who do you really think is the better off between them and me?"

The girl did not have to answer. It came in the sudden depth behind his eyes-an ocean she had only witnessed frozen over, now thawed by booze and the remnants of what could only have been tears.

"I really don't want to kidnap you right now. I don't want to revert to what I am _supposed_ to be, to what my duty as a Turk makes me. What I want to do is relax and withdraw and be a murderer some other time. I want to forget what everyone perceives me as and take what's in front of me. Don't you, Aeris? Isn't that why you're really here?"

Reno's drink lay dormant on his side-he sat directly before her, no obstructions but her own seething prejudgments, her own fear and frailty. The brown-haired girl did not answer; and, in response, the Turk only sighed to himself and reached within his pocket. Puzzled, she watched his lithe movements with wariness, until Reno held the remnants of a wilted flower in his cupped palm, one which she realized had come straight from her own garden.

"Your flowers had to die. Deep down they're nothing but hideous little seeds, but who gives a care to really think of what lies beneath them? But in the end they still did their duty…didn't they?"

As Aerith stared at the bloody, crumpled petals staining her fingertips, she did not have to ask Reno what that duty was. As he pulled himself to his feet, dusted off his coat, took another sip of his bottle before leaving it upon the tabletop, she understood. She saw the struggle in its bent tips, its beautifully tattered demeanor, a footprint still embedded within its scarlet body.

"I'll have to kidnap you again some other time. My apologies. But come back when you want to forget, flower girl...I'll be around."

As he left her with a smirk, her eyes strayed back to the flower that had died beneath his feet.

Its duty had been to live.


	2. A shortlived immortality

**Encounters**

**Two**

Her face fell as he destroyed her flowers.

He did it with relish, with sick enjoyment; kicking at the delicate buds, ripping them out by their frail throats between his fingers, shoving his fists into the dirt and flinging soil across the immaculate floors of the church. She cried out in pain; years of fervent care, years of painstaking wasted whispers and murmurs and tenderness thrown away like their ripped, torn petals streaking the ground in bloody remains. Her face streaked with tears, she ran towards him with desperate speed, grabbing at his violent hands, screaming senselessly, imploringly. Nothing made sense anymore. Nothing would ever make sense, and she knew it; she knew her life had been thrown into chaos before this, and yet here, _now_ was her communion into the depths of hell, now was the time she would realize she was falling, falling with nothing to cushion her, nothing but the cold comfort of death.

"_Why_?" She sobbed, staring pleadingly into Reno's furious eyes, "Why did you do that, when I told you not to? I begged you, never touch them, never _kill_ them!"

His voice was cold, absolute.

"They don't matter. They were going to die anyway. Why bother?"

She dropped her hands and stared down at the floor, the sunlight streaking through the tattered rooftop casting a halo of light upon her crippled frame.

"I'm going to die, too…why bother?"

The Turk tipped her chin up, clasped her shoulder. She stared into his eyes and she saw solace in the green chaos.

"You'll never die. Not for me."

He kissed away her tears, and for once Aerith felt immortal.


	3. Monsters

**Encounters**

**Three**

"You're not a bad person."

Aerith held the shuddering child between her arms, stroking the girl's ebony hair as electric sparks rained through the static air, falling in surges of heat against her pale skin. As Aerith stared into the eyes of the Turk which seemed a perfect mirror to her own, her mind ran rampant with emotion—fear for Marlene, shaking and gasping in her arms in convulsions, her tears falling against the cobblestone road before her home; fear for her well-being, as the fiery-haired Turk before her clutched adamantly upon the slender ebony rod in his hands, wielding it like a pistol, a smirk adorning his hard features; and, finally, fear for the man himself, the smoldering cigarette between his upturned lips doing nothing to hide the fiery pleasure in his eyes at the sight of Marlene's state of panic, her own frantic efforts to dissuade him.

The black-suited man hovering above Aerith's kneeling frame seemed to consider this; raising a slender brow, the cigarette danced between his slanted lips, as if to imitate the process of thought within his mind. The rod between his fingers (it was a wonder as to how the sparks seemed to prance about his clenched fist so harmlessly) pulsed in sparks quietly mocking the rapid tenors of her heartbeat, and as he brought it upwards in a quick arc to point precisely over their lowered heads—Marlene whimpering in fear, plastering her tear-streaked skin against Aerith's quivering chest—she wondered if the pinpricks of her intuition were only made from fear-driven desperation.

"Maybe not, maybe so,"

His flecks of ruby hair were embers in the thick sunlight that submerged, yet never truly _touched_, Aerith's cold, clammy flesh with retreating warmth. With a flourish, he pushed the rebel strands from his jaded gaze and pushed the rod forward in a stabbing motion through the air—Marlene flinched, squirming like a tiny worm in Aerith's vice-like grip, yet she did not so much as blink as a spiraling flash of bright light burned against the tip of her elbow, the length of her clenched fingers around the girl's shoulders.

"Do you think you'll both live to decide what I am, _flower girl_?"

Aerith's mind spun; her eyes flicked to the discarded basket upon the ground, its multicolored blooms spilled from the bushel like silent tears. The rose petals seemed disjointed, plucked from their slender stems like droplets of thick, gleaming blood beneath the sickly yellow cast of the clouded sun above. She hoped, as she bit her lip to subside the fresh wave_ of apprehension flooding her __nerves, that__ it was not an omen of the minutes to come. The man had hissed his address to her as if it were a curse from his menacing lips, the noxious_ smoke curling from his cigarette about her petite frame, making Marlene cough in tiny gasps. They were so _close_ to home; literally feet away, yet she did not want to break into a run simply because she would have to hold Marlene, the extra weight too much to run across the thick stone road without incurring this man's weapon straight into the small of her back, or—even worse—Marlene falling limply from her arms, dangling like a shattered stem, taking the full brunt of his electro-rod and making her small body curl in on itself and instantly wither away.

Either way, she knew she could not win if she ran to the safe place that lay so close, yet so wickedly _far_ from her grasp. Even if Aerith made it there, somehow, this man would undoubtedly seize her and cause some harm to the quietly sobbing child in her arms, cause harm to her adoptive _mother_—and she couldn't have others getting hurt for the curse of her blood, the curse that coursed within her veins like a crippling disease. Aeris couldn't see people being sacrificed because _she_ was the monster of a Cetra; the mythical blood rendering her a foreign beast before others, alien in her human body, strange and desired for the power that lay unbidden within her pores, the other half of her actual humanity discarded carelessly in the eyes of hungry beholders.

To this man, she was undoubtedly some sort of prize, her too-human body shimmering in the sunlight like a flesh-colored gem. And Marlene, the poor girl trapped between them meant _nothing_, mere material hindrances to the ultimate goal. Even if it meant the girl's death, it was nothing to a Turk; yet, gazing into his too-hard, too-cold eyes; it seemed as if his exterior were intentionally slicked over in frosty apathy; as if he were _forcibly_ making himself so…threatening.

And so she clung to the small hope, dangling like the wisps of smoke from the man's trembling cigarette, as tiny and ominous as the sparks that crackled from the black shaft, that she could talk her way out of harming _anyone_ but—inevitably—herself.

"I hope you realize that if you hurt this girl, I won't come with you willingly."

The words escaped her lips like a silent prayer; Aerith paid no heed to the cracking of her voice as she spoke, the nervous twitching of her fingertips as she smoothed rivulets of sweat and tears from Marlene's tiny face, her eyes never leaving the man's mask of glittering, emotionless emerald.

For a moment, she thought she saw movement shifting beneath the reflection of his stoic gaze; some form of thought, a fragment of human emotion as he considered, calculated the weight of her words hanging ominously in the stale air. The rod seemed to come to a slower pace as it wafted in crackling threats before them; as if it, too, were thinking, considering. Then, his cigarette pushed its way to the corner of his thin mouth, and his jaw clenched into a crooked smirk,

"Even_ if_ I hurt her, you're still coming with me, flower girl. I've killed plenty, and I don't intend on letting some little brat get in the way of my mission. You can run…"

The rod shuttled forward from its black slumber in an assaulting hiss; Marlene jumped and cried out against Aerith's arms, her mouth a disjointed O, her almond eyes wide with undiluted fear, and at once Aeris gasped, thinking that he had struck her…but she fell limply against her pink-clad shoulder, shoving her wet face into her neck, and the Cetra was stroking her hair, staring up at the cackling Turk with hostile eyes.

"…But either way, I'll get what I came for. Now come along, and it'll be easier for us both."

Aeris bit her lip, shoving the full brunt of her clenched teeth against the crimson skin until she tasted the bitter iron of her own blood. Her nerves screamed against the flesh of her body with frantic fervor as she forced herself to keep her gaze consistent, level with that of the haughty, smug man before her, still reading his threats as ultimately empty despite the all-too real warning of the pulsating electric weapon between them.

She wished she could launch herself at this man, assault him with the feeble strength of her fists, her biting teeth, anything to keep him from touching Marlene, from invading her home and destroying what lay within. She wished she could scream a crescendo of endless curses, threats, insults to this Turk's smirking face, if only to see it crumble for an incomparably sweet moment. But Aerith knew such thoughts would never come true in her congested throat, would never flicker to life in her strained muscles. She was _weak,_ so disgustingly _weak,_ her mind cluttered with endless questions as to _why_ meaningless droplets of blood seemed to seal her fate, _why_ the love between her parents would carry such consequences as to label her, objectify her into an item of desired commodity, a tool of experimentation.

_I've been damned since birth, and I'm not about to damn Marlene with me. I can't let her down…I can't let __Barret__ down…I can't let them hurt anyone…I just _can't.

"What's your name?"

The sudden question lingered, unanticipated, from Aerith's lips, even as she spoke them; they seemed to shock even the black statuette of the man before her, evident in the sudden clenching of his hard fists, the flicker of confusion in the void of his black pupils,

"…Why?" He murmured, suspiciously, his own question sharpened with the edge of the shattered glass of his composure, "Why would that matter at _all_?"

"If you're going to hurt me…" Aerith slowly voiced her thoughts, and at her words Marlene audibly twitched in fear, "Or kidnap, or…" It was Aerith's turn to flinch as subtly as she could, "…_kill_ me, I might as well know who's going to do it. You're not Tseng, after all."

She added the afterthought with a flourish of her sweeping eyes up and down the man's menacing frame, as if he were harmless, as if she were merely inquisitive; as if the two were sitting in some tranquil state, without the trembling girl in her hands, without the deadly weapon in his own, without his toxic threats—as if she had never been born with this blood, this blood that had made things so _complex_and dangerous.

His smile was drenched in cold amusement, clear as broken glass,

"I'm nothing like Tseng. I'm not going to spare you, or come after you in a year's time with empty threats. My name is Reno, and I will be your captor today."

"Reno."

The name burned acid on Aerith's lips as she repeated them; in her arms, Marlene seemed to have calmed slightly, satisfied the rod had not hurt her, perhaps hoping, just as she was, that she would get away from this nightmare unharmed. As for Aeris...well, she wasn't so optimistic.

"Reno…you've been a child, like Marlene, once."

She was not asking him; rather, she was declaring it, a statement struggling to break through the frigid air, to turn the situation to her favor. Reno paused for a moment, his eyes searching her own, sifting through the still, calm green for something …yet, as if he were disappointed, agitated, he merely retorted with another question.

"_So_?"

"So…you must know how she feels, now. She's…_scared_," Aerith pursed her lips as Marlene's grip tightened in silent response to her assumption, praying desperately this would continue as according to plan, "And your mission has nothing to do with _her. _She just happened to be here."

Her gaze met his, then, pleading,

"Can't you just _spare_ her, let her go?"

Reno was an outline of still coal before her, the flecked embers of his hair rippling in the searing wind, his eyes an ocean of cold against the heated contrast of his frame. Her words seemed to have no effect on him, as far as she could tell; except for the sudden twitch of his fingers upon his rod, his gaze melting into quick lapses of curiosity as they examined her, as if he couldn't fathom why she was so desperately trying to help Marlene get out of danger, as if he expected her to concentrate on her own self-preservation. Yes, Aerith thought, that was probably the _sane_ way of dealing with a situation like this. But Aerith knew she couldn't prolong the inevitable. She knew this moment was one of the damnable consequences of Fate turning its favor against her; and sooner or later, she would _have_ to be kidnapped, whisked away.

Why not now?

The sky seemed to laugh at her, lines of cruel mirth etched between the splotches of slate-gray clouds above, the pools of warmth encompassing her still figure, mocking her last attempts at heroics.

_You're not a hero, you're just unlucky. You're too flawed to be human; too cursed to control your own life. So why not spare Marlene's?_

The gods only knew that the man before her, with his suddenly interested stare, received such a job because of _her_. Because _she_ had been born, had been conceived, he was wasting his life away, destroying, murdering, torturing. She created nightmares at her awakening upon this earth; and she wanted it to _end_. That was why Aerith was determined that she would not escape, then, determined that he would take her and do what he wished and maybe _then_, Shinra would be satisfied. Maybe then, it would all stop.

_If I could save someone…if I could protect someone, then maybe I can live with myself. With the fact that my existence is causing so much grief. With the fact that this blood is shedding so much more…_

Yet somehow she doubted it.

Reno interrupted her aching thoughts, responding to her attempts of empathy with a merciless chuckle,

"I'm going to kill _more_ than the little brat in a matter of minutes. Why should her life be anything but over, right now? She's just a lump of flesh, in my way,"

Marlene gave a great, shuddering moan of terror; the rod was alive again, its crackling hiss resembling a sudden roar as bursts of wild, electric currents flew from its lithe, black body. Aerith pulled herself as far back as she could without falling over, gripping the horrified girl in the vice of her white-knuckled hold.

_A lump of flesh…_

"Let her live, and take me! Don't kill her! Please! _You're not a monster, Reno_!" She cried out in frustration, her wide emerald eyes shimmering with inert, unshed tears.

Yet the Turk merely grinned, again, and his sudden smile was so…_docile_ as he held his crackling, screaming weapon, so subdued and _human_ the Cetra fought the urge to gasp in momentary bewilderment.

_Of course.__ They're all just lumps of flesh…how could you live with yourself, otherwise?_

"Close enough, Aerith," He suddenly murmured, his eyes breaking to a soft jade as he held the pulsing rod in his upturned hand, "I'm a Turk."

With a flick of his wrist, the electric rod came screaming down in a burst of white hot lightning, straight for Marlene's inert body. It happened so fast, Aerith's mind failed to form a single thought, her mouth could not form a single cry as she flung the girl's screaming frame from her opened arms, every last ounce of strength pulsing from her frantic fingers to fling the child to the doorstep of her home, the crackling, hot air closing over her wide-eyed face, the unbearable heat searing through her pale, immaculate skin, coercing her hard bones into a shuddering, unbearable _pain_ as her joints wrenched and writhed in her skin, her brain jarred against her pounding skull, her frantic heartbeat pumping against her swelling rib cage as her lungs cried out and her vision became spots of black and white and her breath thinned—

And as Aerith's eyes closed, Marlene's rippling scream penetrating her deafening ears, she thought she imagined the flicker of an apologetic stare in Reno's stunned eyes.

Smoke billowed and collapsed across her vision, filling her lungs with thick smog. Aeris groaned, yet her voice came in a wheezing gasp as her body lurched forward in a desperate, shuddering cough. Her lungs felt as if they had been filled with lead, her heart a steady thrum against her aching head, her disjointed bones. Slowly, emerald eyes willed themselves opened, her pink lips blooming in a grimace against her pale, white face, her weak, dead hands flicking strands of wildly tousled hair from her face.

Her vision blurred with tears as she stared down at the scene before her; and as she did, her ears became aware of the piercing scream of a helicopter's whirring blades, slashing through the dying sunlight of the sky like daggers.

She had pushed Marlene away at the last minute…a move left unanticipated by her captor. And here she was, trapped in oblivion, in a prison suspended in air, ready to be taken away to her fate—

_But why was she here, still in the sky?_

Why was she looking down, her head craned against the opened orifice of the screaming helicopter, its sleek gray body trembling with the throes of its flight below her small, still body?

The answer came in a pair of pale, green eyes that met her own.

_Reno._

Even as he sneered, leering wickedly at the figures facing him upon the ground, the all-too familiar blonde head of Cloud and his companions—her blurred eyes continued to stare in disquiet, disbelief.

_I'm going to kill _more _than the little brat in a matter of minutes._

Thoughts began to slur from their blurred disjointedness into a still, unsettling comprehension. The smoke that entwined in thick, vertical clouds through the air was not from the cigarette held firmly between his frigid lips; but from the still columns of the building she overlooked, from the shimmering gold of the faulty, trembling plate beneath that held the foundations of the flawed, vulnerable city together above the heads of the populace...even from her vantage, hundreds of feet above its gleaming, sleek body, it seemed to brim with quiet life, as if it were reaching out, yawning to engulf them in desperation to save the unsuspecting slums, the innocent lives beneath…

"No," She gasped, and her body lurched forward as a sickening surge of realization swept through Aerith's mind, "_Noooooooo__!"_

"Aeris!" Cloud's all-too familiar voice floating below, his eyes caught in frozen currents of shock.

And Reno met her gaze again, a challenge in his flickering eyes.

_Am I monster now?_

As he pulled himself away from the shuddering length of the building, the convulsing plate above—she felt her hope slip through her fingertips, suspended in the smoke-filled air as a sudden cry from below pierced the world, and the gushing blood of the sky spilled in the scarlet explosion of layers of unraveling dynamite in the heavens, hundreds of unraveling eyes shedding unlived lives and unspilled tears as they became ultimately silenced, ultimately extinguished by the dislodging debris, the falling rocks and the sliding, shattering metal body of the great plate down to the ground below.

_Squashed like ants, like vermin_; she closed her eyes as the tears collapsed upon her cheeks, as the plate collapsed upon the running, screaming, frantic throngs of women, children, faces suspended in an instant of stilled, terrible time…she didn't want to think Marlene was one of them, her face hideously disfigured in her mind…

And Reno was standing above her, faded grace in the endless black of his suit.

_A grave-digger's suit. __A coroner's suit._

She failed to see the humanity in his eyes.

Aerith buried her face in the awaiting coffin of her palms, struggling to erase the sudden black night that suffocated the light from the afternoon sky, struggling to erase the sight of the lives sealed with blood against the immaculate earth, the lives erased by the actions of the man so close to her.

_You're not a bad person._

Her own words a mantra of comfort to herself, as she lay against the helicopter's cold floor, fighting the urge to fling hers body from its confines and into the air, to die with the lives she had thought she could save—the lives she _should_ have saved, should have done something for, instead of merely watching them, exploding before her like imploding dolls.

_You're not a bad person._

Her eyes streaked with moisture against her skin, the heat of the electric shock still in flames against her spine. At once, the challenge of his face subdued her thoughts, filled her mind with venom; her sickeningly pure, sickeningly naïve mind…her crippling thoughts, optimistic assumptions.

"Bastard," She could only hiss, as Reno's hand lay against her shoulder in a current of ice.

"Just doing my job."

It wasn't simply an insult to the Turk above her, his gaze never leaving her body as she pulled herself to her knees. It was an insult to _herself_, for the realization that even then, even as the explosions of the world below flickered across his wan skin in shadows of sinister light, even as his hard eyes stared out at the breaking, collapsing world before them, even as his lips slurred to form the words, _Mission Accomplished_, in a stoic, uncaring drawl—

She still saw him as human, his voice uncharacteristically soft compared to his sudden act of mass murder, his hand so comfortingly apologetic on his shoulder.

Apologizing for the Fate which they could not control.

Apologizing for what was to come.

Apologizing for the humanity hiding behind his smoldering eyes.

Apologizing for their powerlessness.

They were both just doing their jobs—humans disjointed into monsters in the eyes of the falling world.


End file.
